All things about the media, marketing, business, Japan and other musings by Mike in Tokyo Rogers.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Tokyo Gets the 2020 Olympics... Unfortunately...

(This post will be either loved or hated by many people. This is just my opinion... One not to be spoken loudly in public in the current atmosphere... Don't get mad at me about it. My opinion isn't going to change a thing. If it makes you mad, then perhaps it's because my points can't be denied?)

It was just announced this morning that Tokyo was awarded the 2020 Olympics... Egads! The worst result possible (for the people of Japan!) Congratulations to the "losers."But don't get me wrong, I think the Olympics are OK... As long as the taxpayers don't get stuck with the bill.... But, for the life of me, with our current economic problems, I can't see how this is going to help. No. I only see it making things MUCH worse... Excepting for the "Bread and Circuses" part.No, I'm not happy about it. One would have thought that because of stuff like Fukushima that Tokyo getting awarded the Olympics would have never happened in a million years... But it did. I guess Abenomics and throwing money around works! Of course, or as Homer Simpson would say, "Doh!"The announcement was made this morning. Yahoo reports: Tokyo will host the 2020 Olympic games, beating out Istanbul and Madrid:"...Both Istanbul and Tokyo offered notable steps forward for the Olympic experience. Istanbul would be the first time that a primarily Muslim country would host the Olympics, while Tokyo would be the first Asian city to host it twice. Tokyo last hosted the Games in 1964. Madrid had attempted three straight times to win the Games, but failed yet again despite a pitch for a "sensible, reliable and trustworthy" Olympics. Madrid officials noted that 80 percent of facilities which would have been used for the Games were already built and in use."That last line is the telling one. "80 percent of all facilities... were already built and in use." Yeah. That kills Madrid. Why? Well, if shit doesn't need to be built then who is going to throw around all those juicy construction contracts (built on taxpayers money) to their buddies in big construction companies? Who will pocket the kick-backs? What well-connected individuals or privately run corporations will buy those facilities (built with public tax dollars) for no-bid contracts after the Olympics are over?Yeah, in spite of all her problems, Japan still has a better economy than Istanbul and Abenomics guarantees a lot of (freshly printed) money will be thrown around... The Japanese taxpayer? They cheer and scream and bend over for more.These people are so brainwashed that they think the Olympics coming to Tokyo is actually a good thing and that somehow, by magic, their lives have improved and they will make more money!?People these days watch too much TV and are sorely lacking in the information and critical thinking department; they parrot what they are told on TV.By the way, it's all just anecdotal evidence, but I asked dozens of Japanese people (you know, lowly workers and tax payers) if they wanted the Olympics. Not a single one of them said, "Yes.""Oh, but the Olympics will be good for the economy!" Oh really? Tell another country that is deeply into corruption and kickbacks, Greece, about that one. This from the Daily Beast:"Indeed, the $12 billion cost of hosting the Games contributed to the Greek economic collapse and left an abandoned Olympic Park, which has been overrun by weeds and graffiti artists." Yeah, but that's Greece. Japan is different, right? Nope. Japan should have learned her lesson a short 16 years ago. Please refer to Yahoo: Olympic Cities Booms and Busts?Nagano, Japan (Winter 1998) Boom or Bust? Bust The full cost of the Nagano Winter Olympics will never be known as the documents accounting for money spent on the Olympic bid were burnt on the orders of the Olympic Committee vice-secretary general, Sumikazu Yamaguchi. (Emphasis mine) Yet it is clear that it went vastly over budget, with new infrastructure to make the Games work in this small Japanese city costing up to A$9.4 billion. As a result, Nagano fell into recession, with the debt on Olympic projects roughly A$28,000 per family and growing. It is estimated that these debts will take until 2015 to pay off.

The Olympic venues alone cost A$20.6 million per year in upkeep, and their rental income brings only one-tenth of that amount. Although Nagano is working hard to stop the Olympic venues turning into rotting white elephants, the cost of their upkeep is not easy for the city's finances. Today it still costs A$2.3 million a year alone to maintain the M-Wave, where local school children take skating lessons on a high-speed 400-metre rink in winter. The installation of a high-speed bullet train during the Olympics also posed problems for the local hotel industry as more skiers came on day trips rather than spending the night and locals are more inclined to go on shopping days to larger cities. The Japanese government currently has the highest by-far debt to GDP ratio in the entire world... Current estimates have it at 245% of GDP and Japan's Vice Minister of Exchange Rates tell the Telegraph UK:"A debt ratio of 245pc of GDP is not really safe, and it is not happening because we are investing," said Takehiko Nakao, Japan's 'Mr Yen' or vice finance minister in charge of the exchange rate. Mr Nakao said the scope for further fiscal stimulus is running out and the country must restore public finances to a sustainable path by the middle of the decade. "We can't continue to expect people to lend money to us," he told The Daily Telegraph. The comments touch on an acutely sensitive topic. A number of global hedge funds and banks have begun "shorting" Japan's debt, the world's biggest at $23 trillion."

Global Hedge Funds are now "shorting" Japan?... Now the Japanese government wants to print and borrow even more money to pay for an Olympics? (An Olympics that, by the way, will have to be paid back from the taxpayers and through destruction of the buying power of the currency through printing and inflation... Gasoline is already at it's highest price in years!)Testoterone Pit sums it up in: Abenomics Wins: Budget And Inflation Both Jump (Over The Cliff) It would be ridiculous if it weren’t so sad: Facing exploding budget deficits and an uncircumnavigable mountain of debt over twice the size of the economy – Japan’s two largest economic problems – the government in its blind devotion to the religion of Abenomics screams, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” The new budget requests from government ministries for the next fiscal year, which starts April 2014, total over ¥100 trillion. This includes the special account for reconstruction. The ¥99.2 trillion (over $1 trillion) for all other expenses, the mostest ever, is up a breath-taking 7.1% from the current budget of ¥92.6 trillion. And then there is even more that hasn’t been specified yet. While Abenomics has promised to stimulate the economy, it is certainly stimulating Japan’s most destructive problem, the deficit. So the ministries added ¥3.5 trillion to be handed out to Japan Inc., on top of the money it’s already getting, to promote growth (of the deficit). The Ministry of Finance threw its own goodies into the basket: ¥25.3 trillion ($257 billion!) in costs to service Japan’s national debt of over ¥1 quadrillion. A jump of 13.7% from the pile set aside for the current fiscal year."Read more on the government plan to destroy the currency and thereby jumping inflation here: http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2013/8/30/abenomics-wins-budget-and-inflation-both-jump-over-the-cliff.htmlYeah, and one last thing, about that "reconstruction issue" that Abe and his cronies pay so much lip service to... Has anyone seen the areas around Fukushima Dai-ichi and the areas that were destroyed by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster recently? Nope? I did. Just last week...Guess what? It still looks basically like what it did two years ago right after the disaster... Thousands of cars and trucks are still sitting out in open fields... Entire towns and small cities are smashed and still shuttered.... There doesn't seem to be a single person there who is happy with the pace of reconstruction (whether they are pro-nuclear power or anti-nuclear power)...And now Abe and Japan are going to print up a bunch of money, increase the national debt, throw it all on the taxpayers to build new sports gyms and hotels in..... Tokyo?Now, mind you, I am not pro-government spending for any construction projects at all, anywhere... But I am not in the government who, by the way, takes every opportunity it gets - when makes excuses for the sales tax increase - to pull emotional strings of the public concerning the March 11 disaster by mentioning "money needs to be set out for reconstruction" (of the earthquake/tsunami disaster zones). Nope. They say it. I didn't. I don't.I'm wondering where the priorities lie for the supposed "leadership" of this nation? But, of course, why do I wonder? Their priorities lay where they always have been: Buttering the hands of their political friends and allies. Where else?Never forget that the Olympics are a privately run business, when they profit, they keep the profits... When they lose money, the local governments socialize the losses and put them on the backs of the taxpayers.This isn't going to last very much longer...No modern Olympics games has ever made any money:

Watch the video:

Ultimately, the message is: The Japanese debt is 245% of GDP. That means that YOU (Mr. and Mrs. Japan), working people, will be at $140,000.00 (USD) in debt by 2016 continuing today's rate. (That's about ¥13,972,010.33 per person!) We cannot afford to increase debt in this country. The Olympics are fine, but I think you had better to fight to make sure that the government doesn't spend YOUR money on fat projects and then YOU have to pay the bill later! This is why I wrote this post. Everyone can be all happy about the Olympics, but they had better to understand what this means. Adding debt (like Nagano - which added ¥3,000,000 in debt to every man, woman and child and baby in Nagano and is still increasing today). Is something you had better tell your political leaders you don't want.

5 comments:

I guess Obama found physical evidence that Bashar al-Assad is going to use chemical weapons in Istanbul in the year 2020 that must be what freaked them out. Well maybe if you plan your vacation 7 years in advance and buy the tickets today you can save some big money. Avoid Tokyo on 24 July – 9 August 2020 to stay away from the degenerates that will come to see the Olympics unless you want to stay and protect your stuff from them.

I guess Obama found physical evidence that Bashar al-Assad is going to use chemical weapons in Istanbul in the year 2020 that must be what freaked them out. Well maybe if you plan your vacation 7 years in advance and buy the tickets today you can save some big money. Avoid Tokyo on 24 July – 9 August 2020 to stay away from the degenerates that will come to see the Olympics unless you want to stay and protect your stuff from them.

I guess Obama found physical evidence that Bashar al-Assad is going to use chemical weapons in Istanbul in the year 2020 that must be what freaked them out. Well maybe if you plan your vacation 7 years in advance and buy the tickets today you can save some big money. Avoid Tokyo on 24 July – 9 August 2020 to stay away from the degenerates that will come to see the Olympics unless you want to stay and protect your stuff from them.

Without going into the economics like you did, I have similar thoughts about bread and not circuses. I think Japan needs to look after herself before inviting the world in for a look.Hope you are feeling better!Excellent blog.I agree with what you say.I'll say it differently in a blog of my own...

"[India] almost alone of the nations of the world, it more or less ignored the Games. But it is India, whose government does nothing to encourage (or deter) its athletes, that is right, not the rest of the world."

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About Me

Professional music/TV/radio/anime-related program producer. In the music business since 1977 as lead vocalist with legendary Los Angeles Punk Band, "The Rotters" (Sit on My Face Stevie Nix.). Former assistant to the legendary Rodney Bingenheimer (Rodney on the ROQ - KROQ Los Angeles from 1980 ~ 1981.) First and only foreigner in Japanese history to become the General Manager of a major Japanese broadcasting station (TV Tokyo owned InterFM). Has produced a few smash hit programs and several of Japan's highest rated and most famous radio programs - as well as his fair share of crap. Recent Smash Hits were "The TV Show" (Set Program with "Ninja Slayer") which, between April - Oct. 2015, garnered over 10 million viewers. Currently producing and hosting "WTF?" the smash hit Sunday live show on InterFM 89.7
Wrote and produced full-length motion picture "Ghostroads - A Japanese Rock and Roll Ghost Story" which will be released by a Japanese major motion picture company and in theaters all across Japan in Oct. 2017.